


Reconnecting

by indiachick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Body Modification, Dieselpunk, Gen, idek, orientalism...bandied about?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 15:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indiachick/pseuds/indiachick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam literally fixes a broken Castiel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reconnecting

**Author's Note:**

> Filling an insmallpackages wish that asked for "Castiel as a robot, being fixed by Dean, Sam or Jo". This is not a "small package", because I suck at drabbles. I don't even know why this is dieselpunk AU. :D

 

It was nearly dark when Sam Winchester found him, by lifting a corrugated tin sheet to peer at the sordid little burrow Castiel had made for himself. Past Sam’s worried face, the sky was roiling and purple, swimmy with metalflies and dotted with early stars the size of his fists. Red mountains of rusted metal, scrap from lathes and wrought-iron slag rose around them, like the claws of a beast half-interred in earth. Sam looked tiny amidst them, despite being a very large man.

“You’re crazy,” Sam breathed, shaking his head from side to side. Cas just looked at him. It was fascinating, the way Sam’s neck moved when he was doing that. Cas’s head didn’t do that side-to-side thing. “What are you doing here? We’ve been looking everywhere!”

Cas would have replied—that he was at war, that terrible things happened in war, that war left you with broken parts and twisted pistons and leaking valves, that war left you dying in hovels with metalflies eating at your body and regrets eating at everything else—but then, Sam already knew.

Anyone could see that. It was in his eyes—knowledge that couldn’t be disowned.

“Sam,” he said instead. “You shouldn’t have come.”

Sam barked a laugh. “Right. And that would have worked out so well for you. God, Cas. Just wait here, I’ll be right back with the wagon.”

Cas listened to the oddly soothing rhythm of Sam’s footsteps until they faded, and only the metalfly drone remained. He didn’t bother calling out to Sam, to tell him that there was no point in trying to fix Cas, because his mecha-suit was in pieces, and his Intelligence was a pirouette away from the event horizon of black oblivion. He didn’t bother, because this was Sam Winchester. He didn’t bother, because if Sam and Dean could inspire an automaton to turn against his squadron, to side with humans, then they sure as hell could fix a mecha-suit.

For some time he was lost, blackness surging forward to pull him down. For some time he didn’t want to be found.

But then there was Sam again, grating voice and all, and Cas was glad he was there.

*

Sam was unscrewing Cas’s leg. Tarry oil splashed through a torn valve and nearly burned through Sam’s hand. He hissed and deflected left, letting the oil seep over the dusty wooden floor.

“Jeez. You’ve torn up _everything._ ”

“Sam. Do you know what you are attempting?”

 “Please. You think I can’t tell addendum from dedendum? I’ve taken engineering classes. Well, long ago, at school. Well, engineering _theory,_ but how hard can it be? Anyway, Dean and Bobby are taking care of Leviathans at the borders. I dunno when they’ll be back. There’s only me.”

Honestly, Cas didn’t trust Sam as much as his brother. Dean was the mechanic, the genius with machines and pyrotechnics, the one who sometimes saw right through Cas and his “bullshit” and would have written him off if Sam hadn’t interceded on his behalf. He was easy to learn, to memorize. Sam was harder, as complex as those analytical engines he liked to tinker with so much. It made him confusing. Sometimes, a bit dangerous.

 “I’d better not be scrap metal by the time you’re done.”

Sam threw a grin over his shoulder while he went to light the lamps.

*

Sam was very beautiful. Surreal, but this was one of the things Cas kept noticing about him while stuck together in this tiny, smoky room. Not in the way the Chinese girl from the saloon downstairs noticed Sam; Xunyu kept up an almost continuous supply of water and towels and the hot, viscous oil that ran like blood through mecha-suits. She came creeping up the narrow stairs that led to the attic room the Winchester brothers rented, too shy to speak, her eyes always lingering too long on the slope of Sam’s shoulders, the economical grace with which his fingers worked on metal. She always left flushed and flustered, as if _this was it,_ Sam had somehow inadvertently frightened her away for life without even saying a word. But she always came back.

 _Castiel_ thought Sam was beautiful, because his face never stilled. He had warm smiles for Xunyu, concerned glances when he took the damaged bits of Cas’s mecha-suit in his arms. He frowned, biting lightly on his bottom lip while he studied struts and welds and rivets. There was steel-eyed determination when he set about putting things together—the oiled wheels and cogs, thick galvanized metal-tubes, the exhaust ports that hissed remnants of steam and turned his hands red. Scientific fervor ran flush under Sam’s skin, glowing, when he finally fixed the Edison engine that powered Cas’s limbs.

He was inordinately,  wonderfully _human_. The mechanics of flesh and blood and bone were a mystery, an intricate meld that no engineer could put together from raw material.

“Cas, hey?” Sam made a wriggling motion with his hands, his eyebrows raised.“Can you move them now?”

Cas made a dramatic little sigh and attempted to wriggle his fingers. To his surprise, they worked _fine._ He raised his leg, bent it in half, and gave an astonished gasp.

“You actually did it.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You sound so surprised,” he snorted. He ran a hand over his brow, wiping off sweat but leaving behind a smear of black grease.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel said, sincerely. “You don’t seem to like that I am.”

Sam shook his head in surrender, but then he smiled. A fragile, bitter smile. He looked worse than Cas felt—oil and grease on his clothes, shirt sticking to his skin with sweat, hair wrecked and all over the place. He hadn’t slept in two days, and it showed in the bags beneath his eyes, his pale skin. The wanness had a bit to do with pain: Sam was limping a little when he walked, wincing with every step. With a sharp twinge of conscience, Cas realized why.

“We’re not done yet,” Sam said, “I’ve to replace the valves and ports around your aether cavity, make sure the pressure hasn’t blown them out. And those metalflies have really done a number on the plating over it. We could wait for Dean—if you want—but if you’re leaking aether in there—”

 _You could die._ Castiel knew that. Of course he did. But what Sam was suggesting—taking apart the aether cavity and putting it back together again—meant he’d have to trust Sam to take the blue spool of his Intelligence, keep it safe and put it back _just_ right in its cradle of metal and aether. It was what made him more than human. It was what made him an automaton with a capacity to think, know, _feel_.

He’d have to trust Sam with what might as well have been his soul.

 “Do it.”

Sam looked up from where he was fidgeting with some mecha-suit blueprints. “Are you sure?”

Cas looked at him and blurted out, “Why are you even doing this? I injured you. I opened the door to let the Leviathans out—”

Sam’s voice was heavy, but he smiled. “Everyone makes mistakes, Cas. I know that more than anyone else.”

*

When Castiel woke again, the tiny room was in darkness. He powered up his mecha-suit silently, adjusting his vision until he spied remnants of dinner on the small table to the side: apple pie and bacon and black beans. The floor was a workshop disaster: all glittering metal and gleaming oil, splotches of lubricant like blood spatters. A faint whiff of gunpowder hung in the air, balanced strangely by orange pekoe tea. From downstairs came coarse laughter, xiao flutes and huqin fiddles, the somber notes of a yangqin dulcimer.

Up here, things were quiet, though not entirely silent.

Sam sat on a chair at the far corner of the room, leaning forward. Dean was on one knee in front of him, poised like he’d just sat down, and they were whispering.

“You’re mad,” said Dean, shaking his head, a low thrum of anger in his voice. “Do you have any idea—the _risk_ , after everything—”

“I couldn’t just leave him there.”

“Yeah, you’re a saint, Sammy, whatever. Messed you up good and proper and you’re running around playing the fucking _savior_ ,” Dean lashes out, then sighs when Sam flinches and turns his head away. They’re quiet for a few seconds and then Dean huffs, “Look. Fine, I wouldn’t want you to just abandon him, either. I’m kinda glad you found him. Hard times, we need all the friends we got. Sell our souls to keep the ones we have—I get it. You shouldn’t even have _been_ out there, is all I meant. You’re still healing and now you’re limping again— _There_. What? What’s this?”

“Nothing,” Sam said, dull shot of resignation in his voice. “It’s nothing.”

“Did you fall?”

“No. I didn’t fall, Dean, seriously, it’s not important—“

Sam made an impatient noise as Dean reached out, rolling up his pant leg. Castiel held a breath he didn’t have to take, because from calf down, Sam’s leg was a strange syncretization of flesh and bone and metal: piston rods and flywheels; spur, sprocket and cog.

Cas felt a strange new emotion surge up in him, nearly knocking him out: an _impiety_ , of sorts.

None of this was fair. None of this was _right._

“You know you need to be careful, don’t blow out any valves with the pressure—”

“I didn’t do anything to it.”

“You don’t have to. Just spending too long on it’d do the trick. You’ve screwed it up here, I can see--”

Sam caught Dean’s hand as he reached for whatever he saw, shaking his head. “I’m tired. I just want to sleep. Let’s do this tomorrow.”

“Sam—”

“You said I fixed him good. That took time, and energy.  Now it hurts, and I just want to go to sleep. Please.”

Cas watched Dean give in, as he only ever did with Sam. He watched them _stay_ there, unmoving and silent, quiet for the longest time while the raucous orchestra continued downstairs. Then he watched them unwind themselves from their positions, Dean hovering as if he’d like to help Sam, Sam giving him the silent _don’t you dare_ with just the set of his shoulders. He watched them collapse onto their beds, Sam fussing to get comfortable, Dean just lying there on his stomach with his hand dangling from the edge and going on about borders and black goo and “fucking Boyle’s Law, Sammy, show some respect”, and the newest industrial wonder: Heimdall’s Patented Hydraulic Telephone—until Sam’s answering hums tapered out to silence.

Cas could have told them—that he was at war, that terrible things happened in war, that war left you with broken parts and twisted pistons and leaking valves, that war left you scrambling and desperate and willing to break things that are, in inexplicable ways, beautiful—but then, they already know.

It was in their eyes, their silences. The kindness they meted out. The transgressions they forgave. The friendships they kept.


End file.
